Love Elden Ring Nightreign but starting to feel the grind with the recurring three-night boss cycle and predictable Everdark sovereigns? Don't worry, Nightfarer, because a brand new, brutally challenging game mode might be on the horizon to completely overhaul Nightreign's core gameplay.
This upcoming mode, called Deep of Night, was uncovered and shared by dataminers. It appears to function as a skill-based, endless challenge. Unlike the standard Nightreign experience, you won't be able to select your target boss; one will be randomly assigned to you. Each victory increases your "Depth" rating, ramping up the difficulty. The system will typically match you with other players at a similar Depth, provided the queue times remain reasonable.
According to the datamine, there are five overarching Depth tiers, each containing 999 individual ratings. Defeating bosses advances your Depth. Failed attempts will cause your rating to drop, but once you reach Depth 2, you can never fall back into Depth 1. It's unclear if this lock applies to all Depth transitions or if it's primarily a system to separate seasoned players from newcomers.
Elden Ring Nightreign new mode: Deep of Night
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Deep of Night introduces several other significant changes. Some bosses undergo "magmafication"—exactly what it sounds like, they become shrouded in molten rock. This likely grants them enhanced power (and is certainly not something you'd want to grapple with). New weapon effects and more potent armaments will be available, offering greater buffs but sometimes with trade-off drawbacks. Players will also gain access to three additional relic slots on top of the standard three, though these new slots are exclusive to the Deep of Night mode. Dataminers also found new relics with more powerful effects, which similarly may come with balancing downsides.
Overall, this new mode sounds like a compelling twist that could rejuvenate Nightreign's gameplay. While the community remains active, engagement has gradually declined since launch, partly due to the increasingly repetitive rotation of Everdark sovereigns. FromSoftware recently announced the next new Everdark boss, Caligo, set to arrive tomorrow evening.
From a frozen haze, the winged terror emerges.
— ELDEN RING (@ELDENRING) August 5, 2025
Let flames rend these frost-laced shadows.
The Everdark Sovereign version of Fissure in the Fog will land on August 7, 2025 at 03:00 CEST | 18:00 PDT (6/8) | 10:00 JST. pic.twitter.com/PedcHLeDS2
At launch, we awarded Elden Ring Nightreign a 7/10. Our reviewer noted, "when played as intended, it stands as one of the finest three-player co-op experiences available—though achieving that ideal is often more difficult than it should be, and solo play suffers from balance issues." The game has since added a duos mode and had sold five million copies as of July.
